


All The Colours Between Us

by paintkettle



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Action, Angst, Banter, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Love, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character Death(s), Post-Canon, Slice of Life, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:12:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9313055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintkettle/pseuds/paintkettle
Summary: A collection of one-shots and longer multi-chapter parts, sometimes - although not necessarily always - based around a colour as a starting point, and exploring the uncertain world around two ZPD Officers, one rabbit and one fox.This part-work now continues as the seriesAll The Colours Between Us.





	1. Blue Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You good, Wilde?”
> 
> “Ride of my life.”
> 
> A routine Traffic patrol suddenly escalates.

Officer Nicholas Wilde clung to the safety handle fixed above his door of the Prowler with both his paws, eyes pinned wide, head tucked deep into his shoulders.

He could feel the seatbelt begin to react, begin tightening, pulling taut over his chest and squeezing around his waist. Spilt coffee was working warmly down his leg and onto the seat beside him, the cup rolling away into the footwell below.

The emergency beacons on the Prowler roof span _red-blue-red_ , the siren wailing steadily. Nick winced at the sound, flattening his ears to try and lessen the rise and fall and the _throb_  that came with it.

Her right paw up high on the steering wheel, Officer Judith Hopps relaxed on the brake, only to stamp her footpaw down _hard_  on the Prowler’s accelerator. The kick-down made the vehicle shudder, engine racing as the gearbox de-clutched and then re-engaged to surge forward.

Her paw pulled down a good quarter lock, the tuned power-steering scaling up the rabbit’s deft inputs. The drive wheels bit into the road as the Prowler rolled a little, tucking, hunkering low on the corner.

Straightening the next bend, she could see their fleeing quarry ahead, exhaust blowing fuel and smoke, the rear-end lit up by the Prowler’s alternating high-beams as they cut through dirt and debris. Grit tick-ticked across the Prowler’s bodywork.

“You good, Wilde?”

“Ride of my life.”

“ _Call it in_ , Slick.”

“Oh. _Oh_ …”

Nick’s eyes darted up at his paw, then down, looking where he’d land it as he let go of the safety handle - to his shoulder, to the jacket radio clipped there. It squawked as he gripped the talkback and pulled it close.

“Hotel Whiskey Five Six to Dispatch. Uh… time is oh-one-thirty-two, We’ve got a vehicle with an active ANPR marker -it’s failed to stop. Driver only, no passengers.”

He barked the fleeing vehicle’s registration mark, and, clearing the ANPR screen, he glanced at the speed reading on the onboard computer terminal. Wow, he thought. For a beat-up little runaround in town, it was going at a fair clip.

“Sixty, six zero, open road towards Aloe - low risk,” he added.

The dark city flashed past as Judy accelerated, pushing the Prowler on, on, closing the gap as much as she safely could, to keep the running vehicle in sight.

“ _Dispatch to Hotel Whiskey Five Six, continued pursuit authorised — two units converging on your position._ ”

Nick glanced to Judy. Her eyebrows were low, her face scrunched in concentration and without looking away from the road, she gave him her curt answer:

“I’ve got this.”

“Uh, hold on assist, Dispatch.”

 _ThumpThump_.

Nick’s heart was racing as the Prowler rocked from side to side.

 _ThumpThump_.

His paw was flat to his chest, as if trying to feel for it knocking against his insides.

 _ThumpThump_.

Then, he caught the rise and fall of the road surface, safety markings and chevrons blazing bright in the headlights.

 _Speed bumps_.

He scoffed and shook his head, his eyes flicking up instinctively before he even realised as they caught movement ahead.

The running car had swung out suddenly. Lights. Red lights. _Brake lights_.

Judy’s left paw was up this time, anticipating the turn.

A screech of sliding rubber and the fleeing vehicle shifted, bolting sharply into a side road. Nick let out a yelp as Judy quickly pulled the steering down, half lock this time to pendulum through the turn.

“Slick. _Commentary_ ,” she reminded him.

“Uh, left, left into residential…”

He stopped, mouth slack.

“Goji Avenue,” Judy pointed out, hoping to kickstart Nick’s commentary. She didn’t want to have to concentrate on that as well as the pursuit.

“Guh… Goji Avenue. Clear road. No pedestrians — luh… low risk.”

The streets suddenly began to narrow, to turn and buck and weave. Judy kicked down again as the car ahead started to slow, to hesitate as it closed in on the intersection just ahead. A single suspended red light was glowing and there was traffic flowing _across_  the road.

The car suddenly surged and headed straight at the intersection, rocking a little, building into a weave, picking a position, a moment. The driver _must_  have seen a gap she hadn’t.

“Oh, _don’t_.” she breathed.

“Red light. Red light. _Red light_!” Nick groaned through his gritted teeth.

Judy pressed down with a flat paw on the centre of the steering wheel, switching sirens to a rapid _whoo-whoop_. She was already looking to the left, the right, down the road and far past the light.

“I see it.”

Judy slowed the Prowler fractionally, covering the brake, watching for gaps as the car ahead forged across through the junction. Judy could hear brake reactions from the opposing traffic.

Oh, _crackers_ , this was going to be tricky.

Nick’s nostrils flared. The Prowler cabin reeked of his own fear now, but it was that other scent, _her_  scent, that was starting to push his eyes wider. He shook his head briefly, trying to shake the bright, keen scent away.

He pressed back into his seat, as if to physically distance himself from the unfolding scene ahead, footpaws working pedals that weren’t there. Horns began to blare on both sides.

A lurch, a weave, a breath in, then, *hard* acceleration again and somehow, _somehow_ Judy had got them clear, kept them safe.

“Fu-luff! We’ve got to call for support, a box, anything! — they’re not _stopping_!”

The two vehicles were scrambling down the street now. It began to widen as it merged with other routes.

“We can’t. Not here. Residential.”

 _Protocol,_  thought Nick. Even if they were authorised, they shouldn't force a stop in a residential area at these speeds, but...

“Hopps, this is _Zootropolis_! It’s pretty much _all_  residential!”

Nick could see Judy’s jaw working, brow furrowed. She wanted to catch this car, needed to catch this car,  _had_  to catch this car.

Judy pressed on, passing other vehicles that, thankfully, were pulled aside and deferring to let them pass as the Prowler clambered and wove through the gaps.

“Judy.”

If she could just get closer - she wasn’t authorised for an interception, but she could just get ahead, get them to de-camp, get them on footpaws, she’d be faster, faster and she’d _catch_  them before —

Sudden horror caught Judy’s breath as the car ahead swerved, rear tyres streaking. The driver was getting desperate. She was too close. The Prowler’s own rear drifted wide, lifting up on it’s suspension. She countered, trying to stop the drift from turning into a full-blown roll.

“ _Judy_. We have to stop this,” Nick was pleading now.

Her taut face opened back up in shock. Recovering the turn, she flicked eyes to the centre mirror. Blue-red emergency beacons were flashing behind, hanging back, waiting for the lead car - her car - to call on them.

For a moment, she gaped, caught in the cold glare of a decision needed. Brow furrowing again, she pinched her lips, then:

“Dispatch, Dispatch, this is Hotel Whiskey Five Six. ATS disobeyed. Fifty, five-zero on Fern, onto interchange towards Rainforest. Runner now at risk. Requesting assist.”

She was calm as she cried out the commentary into her radio, but her one-pawed grip the steering wheel was noticeably tighter than before, her shoulders suddenly taut and scent suddenly dulled.

“ _Foxtrot Delta Nine Seven, Tango Mike Three Three, Hotel Whiskey Five Six, authorised to proceed_.”

With practiced efficiency, the three Prowlers began to accelerate and manoeuvre into a close box formation. The whole thing was over with a flick of the steering wheel and the screeching of rubber. The box was closed.

The next thing Judy was aware of was being sat bolt upright in her seat, ears erect and twitching, eyes flitting.

There was shouting outside, far away, she thought, yet the cars and Officers were all right there, just ahead.

She slipped the Prowler into neutral and ratcheted up the handbrake. All stop.

She listening intently to the gentle tick-tick of the emergency beacons above her as her colleagues swarmed around the boxed car, tasers drawn and red dots shining.

She hadn’t even noticed she was holding her breath or that Nick had jumped from the Prowler to assist with the arrest.

The driver. A goat, abruptly wrenched from their seat, through the open window of their blocked door, sprawled and cuffed over the little runaround’s hot bonnet.

Her heart thumped and suddenly her chest heaved with a gasp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a short dabble with action in "Falling", I thought I'd try my hand at a slightly longer piece. 
> 
> I've used the European "Zootropolis" here, out of preference for the name.
> 
> Other notes:
> 
> \- ANPR is an acronym for Automatic Number Plate Recognition  
> \- ATS is an acronym for Automatic Traffic Signal  
> \- Speeds are in miles per hour


	2. A Red Mist, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Judy glared at Nick._
> 
>  
> 
> _He’d always heard there was nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal, but that glare alone was enough to edge Judy up the leaderboard._
> 
>  
> 
> Following the outcome of a pursuit earlier in the night shift, Officers Hopps and Wilde discuss risk management.

_**Pursuit Report** _  
_**Car** : HW56, Precinct One_  
_**Incident** : 14/A_  
_**Filed by** : Officer Wilde, N P, (Observer) _  
_**Time of report** : 04:25_

Nick took in a breath, filling his chest as he looked at the blank report template on the computer screen in front of him.

He poised his paws above the keyboard, and began.

 _Officer Hopps, J L, (Driver) and I were on routine traffic patrol around the Upper District, when at 01:32, the vehicle indicated (photo and registration mark attached) set off the ANPR, so Officer Hopps attempted a routine stop._  
  
_The subject vehicle proceeded to make off at speed, which considering it was one of those underpowered about-town runabouts, was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself._

The desk shuddered a little as he typed, hitting each key on the board one by one with single, pointed claws.

_As Observer, I calmly ran accurate commentary as we pursued, during which a hot beverage was displaced, contributing to the damage of one pair standard issue uniform trousers (expenses reciept attached)._

_When it was pretty clear the vehicle might cause a difficult situation to develop, Officer Hopps requested assistance to carry out a tactical stop._  
  
_Once safely stopped, I bravely leap to assist with the arrest, while Officer Hopps remained with the Prowler. Officer Hopps' report may indicate that I slid across the bonnet of the Prowler in a manner similar to either Snarlsky or Hutch but I can't recall to that at the time of writing._

_The arrest was then made with the minimum of disturbance as Officer McHorn carefully placed the offender on the bonnet of their vehicle in order to apply restraint._

Nick squinted as he leant in a little, trying to focus on the words he’d written.

He was still getting used to desk work, and whilst excellent night vision was a valuable asset in the field, it was somewhat less useful whilst sat grimacing at a computer screen.

Outside, he could just smoothly land a pair of sunglasses on his snout to filter out the brightest of daylight, but back-of-house it was neither practical nor effective. Besides, everyone had recently figured out he was just putting them on indoors in order to doze through day-shift meetings.

He rubbed the bridge of his snout and peered at the screen over his pinched claws one last time. With a smile and a nod, he clacked his claws smartly on the keyboard, saving the report.

_Thump thumpthump thumpthumpth_

Nick glanced up from the pursuit report, his suddenly upright ears pivoting towards the little drumming noise at his side. He’d heard it enough times now to know what it meant, and closed his eyes for a moment, before defensively putting on a smile to turn, hitching his arm up over the back of his task chair.

“Officer Hopps,” he nodded.

The angry rabbit was stood arms folded tight, her footpaw *pounding* on the carpet-tiled floor. She looked particularly furious. He held his own paws up, pads out.

“ _Listen_ , Carrots,”

Judy raised a paw pointedly at the fox. Her lips pinched for a moment as she did so.

“You were in _no position_ to give me orders!” she barked. “I outrank you, _remember?_  I could have you written up for insubordination.”

“Whu… outrank me by ten months, maybe,” he spluttered. “Besides… orders? I was giving you _options_. I’m your partner, that’s what I’m supposed to do, no?”

“If you hadn’t been so busy _hiding_  behind your paws, _Wilde_ , you’d have seen _I_  was _managing_  the risks!”

The fox pursed his lips and shook his head.

“Carrots. We had a chance to call for an assist and, who knows, get one of those things—”

He swirled his paw round and round, trying to find the word.

“— _Stingers_  are they called? Well, we could have got one of those dropped ahead to stop that car, I don’t know,” he shrugged, “long before they got into controlled traffic or that residential area. _That_ would have been managing the risks.”

Judy glared at Nick.

He’d always heard there was nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal, but that glare alone was enough to edge Judy up the leaderboard.

Wisely, he started to back up.

“Look, it’s _fine,_ ” he began. “It worked out. You drove to your usual standard under difficult circumstances and called for an assist. _No big deal_. We arrested the driver and got their car impounded. Job done.”

“And, as an important bonus to the whole thing, we managed not. To. Crash.” he added, emphasising each word with a tap of a claw against the desk.

“It's all in my report, right here,” he said proudly, tilting his head and thrusting his paws towards the paperwork . Judy could see he’d left the caps-lock on for the first four paragraphs. “But, you know, it was riskier than it should have been. The look you had in your eyes, and your _scent_ , well.”

His eyes suddenly widened.

“ _That_ was the red mist you had there, Carrots.”

Judy grumbled quietly. It wasn’t the first time she’d been pulled up on being hot-headed and impulsive by Officers she was working with, but it was certainly the first time Nick, ordinarily the very embodiment of lackadaisy, had been so fervent about it.

Besides, it was _professional tenacity_ , as she preferred to call it. It was how Judy approached all her work, and without it, she wouldn’t be serving in the ZPD, let alone Precinct One.

But, Nick was right, she’d been focussing so hard on an objective that she could have missed critical details and evolving risks. The near-roll of the Prowler earlier that night was evidence of that.

She groaned inwardly.

Noble risk-taking was the prescribed term for it in all the handbooks Judy had ever studied.  _Everyone else_  in Traffic just called it red mist.

“Nick, I was _not_  taking any risks I couldn’t manage. I did not experience ‘red mist’.”

Her small paws made sarcastic little air-quotes as she rolled her eyes and drawled the words, although she was starting to doubt her own words now.

“If it’d been Fangmeyer or Grizzoli, I’d have understood,“ Nick began.

 _Oh, here we go,_ Judy thought. _Rabbit drivers_. Her eyes rolled.

“Is this about my driving now? What do you think _this_  is, Wilde?” Judy jabbed a claw at the little badge on her lapel, a tiny silver steering wheel set into a shield. “I had to get a _Class One_  pass before they’d let me drive _anything_  bigger than that… that _joke-mobile_  they gave me on the my first day.”

“No, look,” Nick sighed, his paws up again and tail tucked under his seat, trying to calm the irate rabbit. “It’s called red mist for a reason, you know.”

Judy’s eyelid fluttered erratically as she fought down her frustration. A blink to compose herself, and she was smiling thinly right back at the fox.

“Go on,” she said slowly, suspiciously.

Nick leaned in, his mouth open as if about to speak, then suddenly closing, lips pinched together.

“Wait.”

A frown crossed his brow and a squint narrowed his eyes as they flicked up and down from eartips to footpaws. Judy felt her face grow hot.

A little smile flickered across his lips.

“They didn’t tell you why it’s called that, _did they?_ At the Academy, I mean. _Ha!_ ”

He straightened up, folding his arms.

“Oh, that is priceless,” he grinned.

Judy gave a little irritated shrug with her paws, shoulders tucking up.

 _Oh,_ do _get to the point, Wilde_ , she thought chewing her lip a little, as she suddenly thought that she might not like the sound of the point at all.

“You know it’s a predator thing, right?” asked Nick. “You chase the thing, you catch the thing. You’re an Officer, this is Traffic, I get it. But, when was the last time a rabbit _hunted_  something?”

In the silence that followed, Nick could have sworn he could have heard the penny roll slowly, slowly to the edge.

And then.

Drop.

Her paws darted to her mouth, breath drawn sharply as she realised what her partner had suggested. Her ears were flat to the back of her head and she hunched over a little - whether that was shock or embarrassment, Nick couldn’t be quite sure.

“Sweet _peas_ , Nick! Really?”

Nick nodded, and the beginnings of his smile spreading out to a broad, toothy grin. Relaxing back into his chair a little, he pointed a claw at her.

“Officer Hopps, you continue to surprise me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Class One pass is based in part on very advanced levels of driver training. Given how hard a rabbit would have to work at driving the larger ZPD vehicles, Judy would likely be required to train to a higher level than most, and _of course_ , she'd pass with flying colours.


	3. A Red Mist, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Oh, why? I mean, I’m a vegetarian, Nick. Vegetarian. I don’t exactly have to stalk salad leaves, or need to lie in wait for beans to sprout, do I?”_
> 
> The conversation begins to take a turn for the fragrant.

Rabbits didn’t hunt.

Graze, maybe.  _nibble_ , certainly, and — as she’d learnt to her chagrin — if _Midnicampum Holicithias_  were involved, bite.

But _hunt?_

She'd not even known it was in the rabbit vocabulary until she’d heard it during a school trip to the little history museum in Deerbrooke County all those years ago, and even then, she'd never heard rabbits speak about it. Rabbits didn’t _hunt_.

Did they?

She paced and fretted, each of her steps chipping away at Nick’s self satisfied grin.

“Oh,  _why?_  I mean, I’m a vegetarian, Nick.  _Vegetarian_. I don’t exactly have to _stalk_  salad leaves, or need to lie in wait for beans to sprout, do I?”

She raised a fretful paw to her mouth once more. Nick huffed as he slunk down from his seat.

“Hey. Look,” he began. “This little…  _wobble_  really isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, Carrots. In fact, no big deal at all.”

He cast his paw towards the blind-shuttered window.

“I mean, this is _Zootropolis_ , after all. So, naturally, whatever is going on in any and everyone’s mind or, body for that matter— “

A pause. He sniffed, nostrils twitching. Judy’s eyes narrowed, fractionally.

“ —as they pack in to this place _every day_ is going to rub off on everyone else at some point, and, well, you know,” he shrugged, crossing to the water cooler across from his desk, leaving Judy to try and fill in the blank.

The cooler gurgled as knocked against it. He flipped up the dispenser lid looking for cups and tutted when he saw there were none to had.

“Now, I don’t know what kind of high-jinks you got up to in Bunnyburrow,” — _ugh_ , that _grin_  again — “but, I do know you’ve been living and working around a few predators in this fair city. And you’re partnered with one.”

“Professionally, that is,” he added, quickly.

“Oh, so by that reasoning, I’m rubbing off on _you_ , too?” Judy asked.

She cringed, instantly regretting using those particular words. There was something _unwholesome_  about them, and if Nick didn’t pick up on them now, they would inevitable get jotted down and stored away in Nick’s _Little Book of Taunts_ for later embarrassment.

His eyebrow ticked up, but for once, he didn’t bite.

“That appeared to have happened _quite_  a while ago.” He tapped at the police badge on his chest with a claw and began to edge away.

He’d almost made it when Judy suddenly stiffened.

“Nick, wait.”

Nick sighed. _Oh, what_  now _Fluff?_

“What _scent?_ ” she asked, nose wrinkling. “In the Prowler cabin.”

Nick paused, his green eyes deepening as a little crease flickered on his brow. Judy leant in.

“You said, earlier, there was a _scent_  in the cabin. Well, all _I_  could smell was _you_.” Judy held the fox's gaze as she waited for an answer.

“Oh. My new cologne.” Nick fingered the collar of his uniform and straightened his tie a little. “It’s Fauve, _for Fox_. Too strong?”

“Hm-hmmm,” Judy hummed smartly. “No. You must have been terrified. It was _not good_.”

“Hm.”

“Nick. I de-musked the Prowler before we took it out on duty. So it was only you. And me.”

Judy wasn’t quite as sensitive to the scents of others as Nick so often seemed to be. Coming to the city had been quite an assault on her senses at first, and growing up around two-hundred-plus rabbits meant that while she was attuned to the ebb and flow of _other_ rabbits, she was still having learning to interpret other mammal scents, and importantly, what they communicated _beyond_  the things that mammals said and did.

It had, over the past months, become another one of Judy’s ‘projects’ and that Nick would even bring up _hers_  in the first place had pulled a thread that she couldn’t help but tug on.

“Was it something to do with this ‘red mist’?”

Her eyes narrowed further and Nick pursed his lips to reply.

“Well. Am I a biologist? No. No, I am not,” he said, turning.

 _Oh, Wilde, you are not getting out of this_ that _easily._ Judy opened her mouth to tell him as much, when a voice wafted up from behind the partition behind them.

“Excitement.”

Both fox and rabbit turned, slowly.

“Definitely excitement,” confirmed the voice.

“ _Wolford!_ This is a _private_  conversation,” Judy sighed, her voice quavering.

“Private? _Really_.” Wolford rose to peer over his desk partition, pointing a claw at his quivering ears, eyes sharp.

“Wolves have ears, you know,” he said dryly.

Judy let out a little nervous laugh, her own ears rising in response. Wolford held the fox and rabbit with his gaze.

The rabbit looked far more ruffled than the fox, Wolford thought, and even though Wilde was pretty much un-ruffle-able, having been caught out by a third party to their little _discussion_ , they were both beginning to cringe back in embarrassment equally.

“Hm,” the wolf’s dark eyes softened a little.

“ _I thought you should know_ , that car you helped stop this morning was _packed_  with narcotics scent-markers. Nip, Howler, the works. It’s in Forensics for evidential right now, but we think it’ll stick.”

“There were some sort of electronics stowed away, so that’s got the techs interested too. Either way, one less pool-car for the criminals and a little more paper trail for us. Good work.”

“Why, _thank you_ , Officer Wolford,” Judy sighed, smiling. “At least _someone_  here appreciates my driving skills.”

She shot a glance at Nick, tapping at her little lapel badge. The fox smacked his lips as his eyes rolled. Wolford tapped his own claw on the metal trim of the partition, before dropping his gaze.

“So. Hopps. Red mist.”

“Ohh-ho-ho. _App-arently_  so.” Judy replied, shifting uneasily from footpaw to footpaw again. The wolf blinked and nodded thoughtfully. The corner of his mouth rose a little.

“Good for you, Hopps. Welcome to Traffic,” he nodded. “Used to happen to me _all_  the time. First time, I howled _so loud_  we almost didn’t need the siren. The team didn’t let that go for weeks.”

Wolford held his paws up, propped by his elbows on the partition.

“ _Hey, the sirens broken,_ they’d say. _Stick Wolford on the roof!_ ” Wolford’s gaze became distant. “One day they even did.”

“This place is such an animal house,” mused Nick, sympathetically.

Wolford quietly nodded. His nostrils gave a barely noticeable quiver and he leaned forward a little to catch Judy’s eye once more.

“Of course, if it’s _really_ bothering you, Hopps,” he smiled knowingly, “just speak to Mammal Resources. Tell them I sent you.”

He dropped his paws and set them down to grip the edge of the partition, before sinking back down to his own paperwork.

For a moment, Judy chewed over what Wolford had said, and _more_  what he hadn’t said.

Nick was halfway across the room, drifting away with his practiced, measured slink.

“Hey, Carrots,” he called. His voice was just loud enough to carry as he swung open the door to the corridor.

“Nick.”

“ _Carrots_ , I’m just heading up to Mammal Resources. You want me to pick up some of those _self-help_ leaflets for you? Don’t worry - I’ll catch you at the end of shift, I can give them you then.”

“Nick, _no_.”

Her face dropped as Delgato and McHorn swaggered past the open door, attention first on the overly-loud fox in front of them, then, with thin pitying smiles, to her. She twisted her footpaw in embarrassment.

Then, quieter, with a finger-pistol:

“We’ll go grab breakfast, yeah? Cup of tea, make you feel better?”

“ _Nick_.”

He shook a paw in a drinking motion as he rounded the open doorway and slipped from sight. The door return pushed back closed with a quiet click.

 _Ugh. That. Fox_.

She resisted the urge to drum her footpaw again. She _resisted_ the urge to follow him, and _then_  the urge to follow him _and_  shout _at_ him.

She shook her head a final time. Resigned now, she returned to her own desk, a little grey bundle of taut irritation. With a grunt, she leapt up to take her seat.

She settled, wiggling a little into the chair to get as comfortable as she could, given the circumstances. A tap-tap of quick claws and Judy had pulled up her own pursuit report on her screen, still to be completed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made some minor edits to this chapter after another reading. Judy's original reaction felt a bit out of character and over the top, so I re-wrote that segment to play up Judy's concern and uncertainty a little more, whilst calming her down. 
> 
> I've also smoothed out a few bumps elsewhere, so hopefully, this second part reads a little better.


	4. Painting the Climate Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I mean come on, they’ve left a file here untouched for three weeks, and on the due date, it lands in my pile. Coincidence? I think not.”_
> 
> A slice-of-life in which Nick and Judy deal with the inevitable paperwork.

There were certain things Nick had begun to dislike about police work.

With a quiet drum of claws on the desk, Nick leant in and surveyed the seemingly impossible amount of assigned work that was waiting in his ZPD inbox.

There’d been a lot of unpredictable shift changes and reassignments of late.

On one shift he might be out on regular patrol, or if the still inscrutable tumblers of the ZPD duty rota happened to align _just right_ , on mobile patrol with his partner, Judy.

Nick's ears had sunk once again as he was handed today's assignment.

“Desk duty,” the sergeant had said.

Judy had been quick to explain to Nick that during busy periods at the Precinct, officers — unless on a dedicated operational assignment — would be assigned to desk duty and could be allocated to whatever and whichever task needed the resources.

Being a rookie, Nick was finding that his own resources were taken up with the paperwork of other officers, all too often finding its way to his inbox to process. 

And one thing Nick was sure of — a rookie found that this happened with alarming regularity.

“ _Ugh_. Carrots, there’s so much of it,” Nick said, resting his head on one paw, waving the other dismissively at the unread bold-text listings waiting in his inbox.

“I’ve got just as much to process as you have, Slick,” breezed Judy, quickly glancing across from her screen.

Judy had been with the force longer than Nick and as such had a little more seniority, by duration of service rather than rank, but still found herself getting short shrift when it came to desk work.

Often, she would just find a position somewhere nice and quiet and get to work, diligently filing report after report, but today she had taken up a spot on the team-desk next to Nick.

He was, she noticed, suffering under a pile of work piled so high that she’d offered to lend a paw and help him clear it.

“It helps to have a system, like this. Do, delegate, or defer,” Judy sing-songed, demonstrating by clearing a few of her own tasks.

“You can’t just keep deferring though,” she added. A tap-tap of claws sprang her next task open on the screen ahead of her.

Nick made a low, irritated rumble in the back of his throat.

“Judging by these inboxes, someone went all around Districts and back deferring all this.”

He scrolled down the list of due dates against each item.

“Look — Today. Today. Today, _Today_ , I mean _come on_ , they’ve left a file here untouched for _three weeks_ , and on the due date, it lands in my pile.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Coincidence? I think not _._ ”

“Happens all the time, Nick,” said Judy. “You should have seen some of the deadlines and tasks I used to get handed.”

Judy arched her eyebrows and let out a breezy little sigh.

“Rites of passage, let me tell you,” she said, and continued with her typing.

 

* * *

 

Their shift wore on, slowly.

Officers filed through the team area, some coming in off patrol, others just heading out. They drifted, loitered and distracted with non-sequitur conversations.

“So — of course — the lights were out when we got there. Yeah, the whole street,” said Snarloff, swirling his mug of coffee.

Nick leant forward with a paw resting uncomfortably above his eyebrow, trying to ignore the conversation about some inane landlord disagreement that Wolford and Snarloff had got embroiled in.

“They’re claiming someone was tampering with the meter, but you don’t have to have a nose like mine to tell the whole thing stinks,” Wolford said, wincing slightly as he drained the dregs of his own cup.

A headache was beginning to work itself across Nick’s forehead like a tight band again, the characters on his screen beginning to grow fuzzy and indistinct.

He looked over to where Judy was working beside him.

She was sat upright, typing steadily at her keyboard, She moved her paw to her trackpad. A double-click, pause, double-click, and the typing would start again. She was quietly humming, a faint smile moving across her lips.

_“hm-mm-mm hm-mmmm, hmm hm-mm-mmmm,”_

“Fluff,” he said.

_“hm-mm-mm hm-mmmm,”_

“Carrots,” he called, a little louder.

One ear perked, rotating toward him.

“ _Hopps_.”

He waved a paw to catch her eye. She turned her head, blinking, as if waking from a trance.

“Hm-hmmm?” she smiled lopsidedly.

“Are you actually _enjoying_  this?”

“Oh, no,” she chuckled. “I’m just used to chores. It comes from living in a burrow, and especially one on a farm. You’d sing a song, make up a story, anything really. Then just get your head down and try…”

Judy stopped, searching for the words.

“Try to make the best of it,” she decided, placing her patient outstretched paws gently on the desk.

Nick clearly wasn’t making the best of anything right now. He looked forlorn. His own eyes were red-ringed and his headfur was full of stiff little tufts where he’d been raking his claws through it.

“Nick? You good?” Judy asked. There was a flicker of concern in the way she blinked.

“Another headache,” he sighed, pressing a pad delicately to his temple.

“You should take a break, you know,” Judy advised. “Before it gets bad.”

It was never really an issue when the pair were out on duty, either on footpaw, or in the Prowler, but desk-work _really_  didn’t suit Nick.

Judy’s eyes were able to deal with a range of lighting conditions, and adjusted far quicker. But good night vision like Nick’s didn’t sit well with long periods under office lighting.

She recalled a few months ago, to assist her for duty on dark moonless nights, she’d been briefly introduced to new low light equipment the ZPD had acquired, and had to squint if the tinted, noisy view in the goggles flared brightly when she caught the glare of a streetlight or headlamp of a passing car.

She’d not given it much thought at the time, but now she imagined that this was what Nick saw every day when he caught the glare of office lighting or a computer screen.

“And you should be drinking more water than you do,” Judy said. Nick made to reply, but she cut him off smartly. “Coffee doesn’t count.”

“Oh, well, I’m not sure this stuff actually counts as coffee,” he replied, matter-of-factly tapping a claw on the dark stained cup beside him, half filled with break-room coffee.

“More like liquid road,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

Judy let out a little laugh.

Nick huffed. “You know, I’m starting to think that a few weeks at the Climate Wall Paint Company would be less tedious than resource work.”

“Oh, I hear you,” Judy mused.

_Painting the Climate Wall_  was a _Zootropolism_  she had heard often in and around the city. It was said that teams of engineers would work annually to resurface the weatherproofing over the length of the Wall that both heated and cooled Sahara Square and Tundratown respectively.

The Wall was so long and the job of painting it so arduous, so time consuming, that once finished at one end it was time to start all over again at the other.

With sigh and appreciative nod for the analogy, the soft tip-tap of her keys resumed.

 

* * *

 

Nick whistled air thoughtfully through his teeth.

Judy lifted her eyes.

“You’ve been sighing like that for the last quarter hour, Nick.” 

“These reports,” Nick begin after some consideration. “The ones I said had been in the system for three weeks. Well, they’re a bunch of noise complaints, each one on filed on consecutive days in the same locality. Up towards Rainforest.”

Judy craned over to look at the last of the six reports on Nick’s screen.

“Nick, they were each investigated and logged, with no action taken. No eye-witnesses, no leads... Noise complaints up there aren’t uncommon.”

“No, but that's a nice little cluster, don’t you think?” Nick asked, thoughtfully tapping a claw on the screen where he’d plotted the report locations upon a Zoogle Map.

“Hm. You’re right. All around those warehouses. You should flag it up for observation,” Judy eagerly suggested.

Nick nodded.

“And,  _done,_ ” he said, his chair creaking as he sat back.

“So, does that mean _we_  get the operational assignment?” he asked across his shoulder. “I’d take parking duty or even _ugh_ , some watch duty right now.”

“Well, no guarantees on getting it in the next docket. We can but try. Good eyes, Slick,” Judy said with a smile.

“Oh, well, they’ve been better Carrots, believe me.”

He rubbed his pads under sore eyes once more.

Judy continued on with her work for a moment, until something caught her attention, making her ears rise and the rest of her lean back a little into her chair.

Judy reached over to her box-file of papers and began to search.

“You know, Nick, I _think_  I might have just found you the perfect assignment.”

Her fingers picked past the wanted ads, the property listings, the to-do lists in her looping paw-writing and even the little pamphlet on mindfulness that Nick had handed her — a slightly awkward attempt to help her improve her focus on blue light response runs — until:

“Officer Wilde, I am assigning you to this,” Judy said, with a smile and a certain authority. She stretched, reaching across to tap the fox on the arm with a piece of tri-folded paper.

Nick rolled his eyes. Printed in a deliberately tall paw-written typeface on the paper waving to the side of him were the words _Lovage and Rocket ~ Takeout Menu_.

“What do you say? A little fresh air? _Hm?_ ” Judy gave him some more insistent little taps with the folded paper until he reached out to accept, plucking it from her paw between his thumb and fore-claw.

“Hm. I will run your little errand,” Nick said, dropping to the floor, a little unsteadily after sitting for so long.

“The usual?” he asked, shrugging his jacket over his shoulders.

“The usual,” Judy nodded. “And get yourself something healthy this time. For the sake of your head, if nothing else."

With a quick side-glance through the window to the bright, crisp day outside, Nick slipped his sunglasses over his muzzle. His ear flicked, and they settled into place.

 

* * *

 

The pair sat grazing contentedly. Screen-savers span and danced on their idle screens.

With a gurgle, Judy drained a little of her vivid green smoothie while Nick rustled a bag and popped a pawful of fried cricket into his mouth, licking his chops with a toothsome grin.

He was glad he’d decided on comfort rather than health. It felt better, and having enjoyed the all to brief time away from the Precinct station he had already returned looking brighter. 

He quickly scooped up a morsel that had dropped on his shirt and it vanished with a snap and a _crunch_.

Judy’s face puckered as he chewed and huffed and swallowed.

“You are a noisy eater, you know,” she pointed out, raising a tiny plastic fork before scooping up her own mouthful of beans and salad. She began chewing, making tiny, rapid crunching sounds, her nose twitching just as quickly.

One, two, three, all the way up to ten and then, _swallow_.

Another mouthful and quickly, again. All the way to ten and _swallow_.

“And _you_  are an incredibly precise eater,” Nick said, a smirk beginning to spread over his lips. “Do you chew the exact same number each time, every time?”

Judy shot him a glance and scowled.

“Stop watching me eat,” she said. Nick’s smirk grew to a grin.

“Oh, but it’s _so_  c…”

Nick got as far as pursing his lips around the vowel before Judy’s scowl deepened like an approaching storm, suggesting he should stop right there, lest there be _consequences_.

He smiled and shrugged, taking another mouthful of cricket. Judy’s ears quivered with each _crunch_ , _crunch_ , _crunch_.

 

* * *

 

The shift was over.

_Are you sure you want to log out?_

Nick considered the system message on his screen for a moment.

_Are you sure you’ve done enough work?_ it may as well have asked.

He blinked slowly and confirmed with a keystroke that yes indeed, he wanted to log out and had in fact done enough work, thank you very much.

With relief, Nick arched his back, arms high over his head. He winced a little as he stretched out the slouch he’d developed during the day, shoulders popping and chair creaking as he flexed. He smacked his lips and cast his tired eyes over to his partner.

Judy was still typing nimbly, working through her remaining task list.

Collecting the detritus of the day from his space at the desk, he eased himself out of his chair and down to the ground.

He rolled his head into his shoulder as his paw went up to try and un-ruffle his headfur.

“So, are you heading off soon, or will you be sleeping in the office again?” he grinned.

“Oh, har _har_ , _”_  Judy said, without looking up from her keyboard. “It was just that once.”

Nick tilted his head. “Er, Nu-oh. Trunkaby told me she used to catch you dozing in the locker-room most nights in the summer.”

“ _Ugh_.” Judy dropped her shoulders. “Like I said. Rites of passage. And with neighbours as noisy as mine, I don't think you'd blame me sometimes.”

She turned around on her chair to face him.

“Don’t worry,” she said, resting one arm up and over the back-rest. “You go, get that head of yours rested. I’ve got a _li-ttle_ bit more of the Wall to paint before I can get away.”

“Ha. Then you’ll go and keep your neighbours company, yeah?”

“I will.”

Nick raised his paw to give a stiff little wave with outstretched claws. “Till the next shift, Carrots.”

Judy held up her own paw to return the gesture.

“The next shift, Slick.”


	5. Broken Windows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So, can you tell me how long have you been having these headaches?”_
> 
> _“Oh, wait. Does that include the ones caused by the mammals I work with, or just the ones caused by work?”_
> 
> Nick seeks help for his strained eyes.

He’d heard all the poetic claims that the eyes were the windows to the soul. He’d even used some as pick-up lines in years gone by.

Nick Wilde’s eyes right now were much like the kind of draughty single panes that rattled on a storm ravaged hut, whilst someone, lost in the wilderness, sat huddled inside desperately trying to make fire to keep warm.

He tried to scan through the on-screen report again, but gave up after the first few lines.

It was another delegated report he needed to process, a simple stop and search that had ended in an intent to supply. Short and concise, but he couldn’t even look at it now without feeling queasy.

His head was buzzing numbly. He’d cut down on coffee on Judy’s advice, and it had helped a _little_ , but the headache was _still there_ , like a splinter he couldn’t work free, developing a keening sharpness in his temple that threatened to cleave him in two.

He rolled the card he’d picked up at the Mammal Resources desk in his paw, over and over.

Closing his red-rimmed eyes for a moment, he relished the cooling darkness, hoping the report would complete itself somehow, to save him from having to look at that screen any longer.

He opened them again with pained sigh to find the cursor still there, still blinking.

Running a pad gently over the laminated surface, he turned the card on its edge and tapped it on the desk surface.

He reached for his phone and dialled the number on the card.

 

* * *

 

 _Dr. Laurel Glazier_ , read the nameplate on the consultation room. Nick couldn’t quite make out the many lettered qualifications that ran below, almost the full length of the name itself.

Glazier, an otter, pulled a cord that slid the _busy_  plate across. She leant and pushed the door closed behind her. Padding over, she glanced down Nick’s medical file.

“So, can you tell me how long have you been having these headaches?”

“Daily, I would say.”

“Okay,” noted the otter with a hint of concern, whiskers twitching.

“Oh, wait. Does that include the ones caused by the mammals I work with, or just the ones caused by work?”

Nick’s response caused her to flick her eyes up disapprovingly.

“I jest, of course,” Nick added, quickly.

“Mr Wilde. This _isn’t_  a laughing matter.”

Glazier gave Nick a withering look. Scolded, he rubbed a paw up over the back of his head, his lazy grin closing down to a concerned pinch.

“No. Sure. The headaches, well, it’s just when I have to do any close work for long periods. Desk work, computers, that kind of thing.”

“Any common triggers? Food, or drink?”

“No, nothing unusual there.”

“Any lights or flashes?”

“No.”

“I’m fine otherwise,” he added, with a sigh.

“Okay. It _sounds_  like it might be eye strain, but I’ll take a look to rule anything else out.”

Nick sat back on the creaking padded seat while the optometrist worked around him. She slid her step-stool closer and, climbing up, moved to cover Nick’s left eye with a small paddle.

“What’s the last line you can read, please?”

Nick gazed at the letter panel in the mirror ahead of him and read the third to last line back for her.

Not great, but at least it was still below the thick red demarcation line that was the ZPD sight requirement across all mammals.

“Excellent. And again?”

His right eye covered this time, he read the same line back.

“Good,” she smiled, jotting down an observation in the little pad in her paw. Nick couldn’t help but try and glance at what she’d written but the numbers and shorthand meant nothing to him.

“Okay, this next part we have to do in the dark.”

Glazier pressed a paw pad to the little controller that was held at her waist. The lights quickly dimmed to a twilight.

It didn’t look much different to Nick. His pupils had flared open instinctively in time with the dropping light levels to scoop up what little there was remaining in the room. All the colour had bled away now to shades of grey, but he could make out the contents of the room in perfect clarity.

Glazier took out a device about the size of a small pen, a point of light dimly glowing at the end.

“Now, if you could look over my shoulder.”

“Let me know if it’s too bright,” she added sympathetically.

Glazier leant in close, close enough for Nick to pick up her scent. It was oddly sweet, not the musty dampness he’d expected. A practiced part of her bedside manner, no doubt.

The dim little light felt far too close and he fought the urge to blink it away, each movement bringing into sharp relief a haphazard spider-web of shadows across his vision. He gripped at the paw-rests.

Usually Nick would find it difficult to bear having someone that close to him, that intense.

But, during the induction medical he went through at the Academy, the duty optometrist — a somewhat twitchy squirrel — had craned and swung around and pressed right in close to his face to get a good view of his eyes. Nick had no idea why, but he had found the whole thing hilarious and burst out laughing.

Even now he had twist and turn his muzzle as a faint smile began to spread, cracking across his lips.

“Okay. Lets try something,”

 _Oh, blessed relief_. Glazier stepped back down to the floor. The lights began to brighten back up and as he blinked to acclimatise, she swung a large apparatus across to him, and prompted him to lean forward and look through the two dark eyeholes she had swung in to suit his features.

The letter chart swam into focus.

Something went click- _click_.

“How about that? What’s the last line you can read now?”

Nick blinked again. There was something different, for sure. There was a strange greying tint, barely perceptible, that drew out the contrast between the blacks and whites of the chart. The letters were more defined now. He could make out the last line of letters now in relative clarity, and read them out.

“Good, Mr Wilde. Well, you don’t actually need corrective lenses, _per-se_ , your eyesight itself is perfectly fine, about average for nocturnal predators your age.”

“But, predators do tend to naturally have trouble with detail and contrast in the daylight. Have you done much close work in the past?”

“No, I mostly worked outdoors,” he admitted with a cough and a raised eyebrow.

“Well, if you’re not used to close work, or extended screen use, that’s most likely what’s causing the eye strain and therefore the headaches.”

Glazier began typing something on a small laptop to she kept to one side of her examination equipment.

“What you need to do is…” she began, her claws making little muffled clicks on the rubberised keys.

“Go get a box of over-the-counter painkillers…”

Beneath her desk, a quiet printer whispered into life. She plucked the slip up and signed it, her pen making a flowing, cursive sound across the paper.

“And a pair. Of. These.”

She punctuated the words with a flourish of her pen and handed the completed slip across to Nick.

 

* * *

 

“Nice, Slick,” Judy said, brightly.

Nick peered at the rabbit leaning her head on one paw next to him.

She’d been stuck filing statistical reports all morning. Narcotics were looking at arrests made over the last month amid concerns that Night Howler was beginning to make it out onto the streets in increasing quantities.

It made for worrying, terse analysis, not least given her connection to the original Night Howler case, and she’d been glad Nick had turned up to distract her from it.

“The colour suits you,” she observed.

“Brings out the green. How’s your head now?”

“I’ve still got a bit of a rhino behind the eyes, but the optometrist said these should help.”

He tapped a claw on the bridge of the spectacles resting across his snout, pupils bright behind the smoky yellow lenses.

“And of course, I’ve got the big guns, just in case.”

He shook the box of painkillers with a hollow rattle. They’d cost more than he’d have thought, but as long as they blunted the headaches before they became too sharp to bear, Nick didn’t care.

“So, does that mean no more of those old-school mirrored things you always wear?” She began to idly flick through the pages of a magazine someone had left at the post Nick was now about to occupy.

“ _Ha_ , as if, Carrots. _These_ are for the office work. They are for _all other times_.”

“Well, there’ll be no dozing through meetings in those, at least,” Judy noted with a sly smile, indicating his new spectacles with a tiny claw.

“I’ll find a way,” he nodded.

Nick drew up a seat and began what was becoming his little ritual to prepare himself for the shift to come. He placed his coffee — a little cardboard cup takeout this time, rather than the usual tall mug filled with syrupy office blackness — on the desk, took a deep breath and tapped the power key on the keyboard in front of him.

While the computer began starting up, he stared at the little progress bar, and ZPD logo now so much clearer than it had ever been.

His ear quivered, and his sharp eyes darted quickly back to his partner, still leaning on her paw, leafing through the magazine beside him.

“Fluff. _What?_ Haven’t you got some leads to follow up or something? I hear they still haven’t caught the counterfeiter who keeps filling the coffee machine in the break room with a substance that  _looks_  like coffee,” he paused to sip from his takeout cup.

“But most definitely doesn’t _taste_  like it.”

He tried to shoo her away with a paw. She wrinkled her nose, flinching back in her seat a little.

“Oh.” Judy smiled wistfully. “I was just thinking.”

“Your eyes. It’s just nice to see them, once in a while.”

“Windows to the soul, you know,” she added, closing the magazine and moving it aside.

Nick’s eyes narrowed slightly. She held his gaze for a short, short moment before beginning to hum again, and turn to return to her reports.

With a slightly crooked smile, he turned to his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started sketching out this and the preceding chapter a few weeks ago, it was very loosely based around the word 'Yellow'.
> 
> I had no idea Thematic Thursday was a thing, and then as I wrapped up and posted the previous chapter last night, I spotted a bunch of stories about a chosen theme of 'illness', and here I was writing a little arc about Nick and his eye-strain headaches.
> 
> So, whilst this isn't anything to do with Thematic Thursday, it does seem to fit with the weekend of general malaise.


	6. Twenty Six Redwood Heights, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Walking through the dew in the still morning, Juniper’s paw trembled slightly._
> 
> _Her ears stiffened._
> 
> _She could hear sirens, somewhere, but that wasn’t unusual, not in Happytown._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a word of warning, this is _not_ a happy chapter and contains some upsetting content, so please bear that in mind before continuing.

**Ardmond and Juniper**

 

Redwood Heights had seen better days.

When a young beaver, Ardmond Holt, had moved into the new, clean ground floor apartment numbered twenty six with his newly-wed wife Juniper — who had _adored_  the little garden plot that their front door opened onto — the organic curves and terraces of the buildings and their fresh render had shone and shimmered, bright as the couple’s own eyes in the spring sunlight.

The apartment itself was soon filled with all manner of time-saving appliances, a little top-loader washing machine, a fridge with a freezer compartment, and shortly after that, a television, all paid for by Ardmond’s new job in the city.

Planned and built as Zootropolis itself had begun to look up and to peer from beneath the shadows of old, _old_  prejudices that had plagued it for generations, Redwood Heights stood _proud_.

Change was in the air. Change for the better.

But soon, that idealistic decade gave way to one of poverty, distrust and decay. Redwood Heights soon faltered too and then quickly became another enclave in the growing concrete jungle that came to be known as Happytown.

Ardmond and Juniper had watched things fall around them, and had tried their best to adapt.

As Ardmond’s city department closed and he came home with his papers, they both had to work jobs they hated to gather what they could to pay the lease on the little apartment where they could be together and share that garden they loved.

But even when the time came to retreat from their garden to the safety of their locked apartment, when Ardmond had been mugged and came home with cuts he couldn’t afford the care for, or Juniper had been spoken to badly by another mammal, or when they heard the fighting outside in the night, they never once acknowledged those unbidden old prejudices had begun to return to the city.

There were times apart when they were frightened, times apart when they nearly broke, but together, they were so much stronger. Together, they sat and remembered those idealistic times that had brought them here and held fast, always looking for the dawn while their eyes were still bright.

Countless neighbours came and went, some willingly, some less so. A diminishing list of friends had asked if Ardmond and Juniper might do the same and move on, but even though living in Redwood Heights was _hard_ , they still loved their little ground floor apartment and its garden.

In the times where mammals had to give up so much, the love that called those things _home_ just couldn’t let go.

But slowly by degrees and, as if to repay Ardmond and Juniper for their faith, Zootropolis began to remember itself again. Over the years, jobs returned and with them some prosperity, and a little hope. _Anyone could be anything_ , came the renewed cries, declared the slogans and began the _aspiration_.

But Redwood Heights remained broken along with the rest of Happytown. It could never stand as proudly as it had done, all those years ago. It wouldn’t be perfect, it wouldn’t be quiet, it would stumble and fall sometimes, but as the time wore on and the city built itself back up around it, it seemed as if Redwood Heights, like Happytown, like _Zootropolis_ might see better days once more.

They only had to persevere as Ardmond and Juniper had done.

 

* * *

 

It was nearly mid August and as the sun rose, the day started early.

It had been a strange few months and change had come quickly. Ex-Mayor Lionheart had been removed from office in a scandal that had shook the city. Reports of predatory attacks on mammals were becoming more frequent and no-one seemed to know the cause, least of all the ZPD who had stumbled through press conference after press conference. Public opinion was being divided, and began to turn sour once more.

Juniper had been in her garden that morning, making the most of the long, already warm day, removing the cans, cartons and other detritus the loitering packs of young mammals had scattered in the grass the short night before, and turning to tend the few bright blooms that had flourished in late spring in the flowerbeds near the apartment.

Juniper had left Ardmond to rest in the kitchen while she went to work, carefully pruning and lifting. He listened with growing concern to the bleating of the new City Mayor, Bellwether, on the little radio they kept by the window. The sheep was conversational and reassuring, even if her words were not.  
  
_…collective gatherings of predators are to be controlled and broken up if necessary…_

_…the City will be considering curfews to manage the situation…_

Padding through the dew in the still morning, Juniper’s paw trembled slightly as she kneaded the corners of the box she held. The metal cans clinked.

Her ears stiffened.

She could hear sirens, somewhere, but that wasn’t unusual, not in Happytown.

There was another sudden noise, one like claws scrabbling on stone that instinctively caught her breath and made her sit up, made her kind eyes suddenly sharp.

A tiger — a feral, _savage_  tiger had bounded from an alley beyond the archway that opened out the small quadrangle of shared asphalt sitting between the apartment blocks. Crouched low, shoulders heaving as it breathed heavily, it’s fierce eyes settled quickly on the tiny old beaver clutching her box of garden rubbish.

For heartbeats, they stared at each other, until shouting startled the animal.

_ZPD! Stop right there!_

With a snarl and roar it leapt, scrabbling up across a low roof and away into the labyrinth of Happytown beyond. Juniper took a sharp breath and blinked.

_Oh._

It was then the pain came.

_Ardmond._

Juniper managed to falteringly call his name before she _gasped_  again and crumpled, her legs folding beneath her, the box of garden refuse dropping beside her, the contents spilling back into the damp grass.

_Juniper!_

Ardmond ran out to her as best and as fast as his stiff legs could, his arm knocking suddenly and painfully against the door frame, his rheumy eyes wide with the shock and filled with sudden, stinging tears as he knelt to hold her close.

She panted for breath, her eyes darting, growing dim.

The blue and red beacons of the ZPD vehicles crowded near the archway in the distance span and the clack-clack of claws sounded again as an Officer began to run over, barking into a radio.

And Ardmond called out for help, for _anyone_ , for  _Juniper_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally going to be a mid-canon one-shot, but I realised I could weave it into a developing arc that I've had sketched out for a while.
> 
> Hopefully it's not too much of a course change at this point, but it certainly marks a change in tone for the next few chapters and will hopefully make sense in the story as I go forward.


	7. Twenty Six Redwood Heights, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Hey, friend.”_
> 
> _Ardmond, struggling to move the litter aside with a short length of cane, looked up to see who had spoken._

**The Gardener**

 

The summer moved quickly to autumn.

Ardmond sat alone, quiet and still on the modest sofa that he and Juniper had brought in the thrift store, how many years ago now he couldn’t recall.

How strange he _could_  remember the day one of those sofa springs, brittle with age had broken, collapsed under Juniper as she sat back.

Her eyes had been wide with surprise and laughter as Ardmond had pulled her up from the deep impression she’d left.

They’d repaired it together, reinforcing the springs with canvas webbing, and made do.

He glanced to the slight dip and worn fabric of the seat close next to him, as he held a small photo-frame tightly in his paws, kneading the corners lightly with his thumb pads.

He’d taken the photograph held inside in the spring. He’d written the date on the back of print, to remind himself.

Juniper’s fur was dappled and streaking with grey, but her orange dress and brown sweater were bright like the autumn sun itself.

It was one of the last days they’d spent away from Redwood Heights. They’d saved some money from Juniper’s part-time work at the little diner a block east, which had supplemented Ardmond’s meagre Zootropolis pension and they had taken a trip to the Canal District.

Her eyes were soft and kind as she smiled back out from the photograph.

What had he said to make her smile like that?

Perhaps he hadn’t _needed_  to say anything.

He held onto the frame tightly, and wept and shook as the grief took hold once more.

 

* * *

 

It was a long winter.

The endless loops of pipework that fed warming water from the heat pumps and exchangers in the Climate Wall out under the main districts of Savannah Central didn’t extend as far as Redwood Heights, so when the hard frost came, it dug in deep.

The flowerbeds became bare, the colourful bulbs retreating to hibernate while the evergreens were clung with hoarfrost each morning.

Ardmond tried to keep busy, to keep active, not least because heating the apartment had grown expensive, but it became difficult as his body was beginning to protest with increasing frequency.

Ardmond’s friends had now diminished to the social services nurse, a broadly built badger who visited weekly, although Ardmond could barely cover the costs.

Ardmond had resisted. It had been another outgoing he ill afford. But it was important, now more than ever that Ardmond had company, at least. When the nurse had been there to help him when he was laid low, to call him back from that freezing grief that had took hold again, Ardmond had been thankful.

In the months of recovery that followed, the nurse had suggested he might carry on with Juniper’s work in the garden when the spring finally came. It would keep him active, keep him from sitting indoors where the grief built up like stale air in a windowless room.

It would be the best way to remember Juniper.

 

* * *

 

Spring struggled.

There were weeks when the warm air rose up from the seas to the south of Zootropolis, and days when the winds snapped, pushing freezing air down from Tundratown.

But, the weather had slowly begun to improve and Ardmond took to clearing away the weeds and tangles that had grown wild throughout the winter.

He bought padding for his stiffening knees to make it easier to work on the hard ground and to stop the cold dew from soaking his legs.

Ardmond bought new evergreens and other shrubs and planted them carefully near the wall, where they would catch the warming sun from the south.

But one day, the stiffness in his legs had grown too great. His nurse arranged a home visit from a doctor, who had rotated Ardmond’s knees and ankles and made the beaver twist his face in pain.

Confined to the apartment and sleepy from the painkillers, Admond sat and cast his heavy eyes around the memories and keepsakes that Juniper had left behind.

From her photograph, Juniper watched with her kind eyes as Ardmond slept.

The next day, the nurse had brought the walking frame.

Ardmond’s frustration as he shuffled around the small apartment with this stiff and cumbersome apparatus was tempered by the support it afforded him outside.

The meagre work he’d put into the garden meant that for a few short weeks at least, he could enjoy it without needing to strain his joints again, or slow his recovery.

The following morning however, his anger broke as he emerged from the apartment to find, amongst the crocuses and evergreens, debris left by the wandering packs of youngsters that were beginning to spend their time gathered on walls in the shortening shadows.

Juniper had always dealt with it patiently, tidying and tending as she went. But that morning for Ardmond, it was too much.

“Hey, friend.”

Ardmond, struggling to move the litter aside with a short length of cane, looked up to see who had spoken.

The sheep, a ram whom Ardmond only dimly recalled as lived up on the third floor, approached down the terraced steps of the tower opposite.

“That’s a nice garden. Such a shame it keeps getting spoiled,” the sheep said with a thick Meadowlands accent. “I’d like to keep one, but y’know. Third floor.”

The sheep shrugged. "Meh," he bleated.

Ardmond shuffled a little, angling his walking frame between himself and the stranger.

“I’ve written to the alderman about this,” Ardmond began hesitantly. “They always say they’d need more cameras, more officers, more money.”

Ardmond shook his head in resignation.

“I hear you, friend,” the ram mused, rubbing a hoof through the salt-and-pepper wool around his jowls. ”They just keep ploughing the big money into places all over, except where it’s needed.”

“Now, I can’t help with that, but I _can_  help you pick this here rubbish up,” the ram continued.

The sheep took a step forward.

“I’m almost done, but thank you,” Ardmond replied, waving a paw. “Maybe next time.”

“Sure, friend. The offers there,” the ram nodded and went on his way.

 

* * *

 

Over next few days, the sheep, who had introduced himself as Russell, stopped by more frequently and was always concerned to see Ardmond stooping stiffly to move aside the debris that accumulated in his garden.

They had talked and grown familiar, and when Adrmond had been sure he could trust the sheep, he had finally decided to engage Russell’s help in clearing and tending the garden. Ardmond’s nurse was happy too, glad that he was interacting with others again.

Russell had shown some particularly green hooves when, one morning Ardmond had found one of the limbs on a bush Juniper had been fond of had been snapped carelessly by a passer-by.

Russell had helped Ardmond prepare the graft and bound the broken limb in place.

“Don’t worry, few weeks and that graft’ll take. Be as good as new,” Russell had assured him, and true enough, after a week, the trunk had grown around the graft and the bush had been made whole again.

Ardmond had asked what Russell did for work. He was so proficient at caring for the garden, Ardmond was sure he must have worked on a farm or as a gardener before his time at Redwood Heights.

“Sure, And I’ve got a couple of jobs coming up towards Rainforest. Things grow well there, friend. _Really well._ ” He was working on transplanting some crocuses that Ardmond had bought to replace some that had been trampled only days earlier.

“Great things,” The ram said as he held one in his hoof, head tilted to regard the little flower as it trembled in the breeze. “When you treat them right, they repay you a thousand fold.”

 

* * *

 

The day came when Russell moved on. The work he had talked about in Rainforest had called him in, and when he came to let Ardmond know, the beaver had invited the sheep inside the apartment.

“The money’s good, I reckon, so I might be able to find a shack in Favela.” the sheep said, tapping a hoof on the breakfast counter-top. “I’m sorry it was such short notice. But as a thank you for letting me well, _practice my art_ , I guess — I’d like to give you something.”

He slowly pushed a small cardboard box across the breakfast counter to Ardmond.

“Something to help keep the rubbish out,” the ram said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I realised I needed to spend some more time with Ardmond, and did a little bit of world building in the meantime. 
> 
> Also, although I mentioned the last chapter was 'mid-canon', this was purely because it overlaps events in the film. Then, I got slightly confused as to what was canon and what wasn't when it came to things like Happytown (see comments) so I'm clearer on it now. 
> 
> By the way, Hotel Whiskey Five Six will be back in play in the next chapter.


	8. Twenty Six Redwood Heights, Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Look, I know how much you’ve grown to love desk-work,” Judy grinned. “But, I for one am glad we got an outdoor assignment today.”_
> 
> _Pulling a paw down on the steering wheel, she swung the Prowler gently into and down the new road, passing an overgrown street sign._
> 
> _Redwood Heights, it read._
> 
> Officers Hopps and Wilde are called to an unconventional noise disturbance.

**Do You Hear That?**

 

Officer Nick Wilde sucked his teeth, turning to gaze out at the rows of tightly packed buildings rising and falling as they passed by.

He peered over the top of the mirrored lenses of his aviators. The road beneath the Prowler made gentle thumps as it’s wheels caught the edges of potholes and rolled over the patchwork of hasty asphalt repairs.

With a push of a claw tip, he slid the sunshades back up the bridge of his muzzle.

“Not _quite_  that Rainforest assignment we’d hoped for,” he murmured.

After spotting some reports from the Rainforest District that had lain unprocessed for weeks, he had flagged them up eagerly, hoping to catch the assignment for himself and his partner Officer Judy Hopps. He later found they had vanished. Snaffled up by another Officer, no doubt.

He’d sulked like a fox half his age when his information requests went unanswered, and dragged himself languidly around for the rest of the last shift, driving Judy to distraction in the little space they had begun to carve out on the ZPD team desk.

“Hm. No, it is _not_ ,” Judy observed tersely.

Whilst she was glad to be assigned outside away from the yellowing lights in the office, she was equally glad their assignment here, to a residence inside the vague limits of Happytown, was during daylight hours.

Happytown _had_ improved in recent years, but it was still not a particularly suitable place for a rabbit unfamiliar with the streets and alleys, or even a fox who claimed to know everyone to be after dark.

“But, it’s been what now — just under a week since you flagged that?”

Judy shrugged as she flicked on a turn signal.

“You’ve got a lot to learn about how paperwork _actually_  works, Wilde.”

Even after the successful conclusions of the Missing Mammals case and subsequent uncovering of Bellwether's conspiratorial plans that led to the ewe's incarceration, Judy could count on one paw the amount of work-ups she’d completed that had _actually_ turned into assignments. When most of them had ultimately led to little more than regular patrol or cordon watch duty for her and accolades for others, she found that whilst she *was* sympathetic, she wasn’t particularly sorry or even surprised on Nick’s behalf.

_The trials of a rookie._

“Look, I know how much you’ve grown to love desk-work,” Judy grinned. “But, _I_  for one am _glad_  we got an outdoor assignment today.”

Pulling a paw down on the steering wheel, she swung the Prowler gently into and down the new road, passing an overgrown street sign.

Redwood Heights, it read.

“Aren’t you?”

Nick shrugged a dismissive little agreement as Judy rolled the Prowler towards a stop. The whine of the parking sensor made sure she didn’t roll their large tyres over the smaller scale vehicles already parked up. She shut the engine off. Her paw was at her shoulder, pulling at her radio. It warbled as she pressed a claw to the talkback.

“Dispatch, this is Hotel Whiskey Five Six.”

The radio chirruped for a moment.

“Hotel Whiskey Five Six, this is Dispatch,” came the response.

“Officers Hopps and Wilde in attendance at Redwood Heights.”

Another warble.

“Copy, Hotel Whiskey Five Six.”

“C’mon then,” Judy said, pulling on the hat that was part of her uniform. Her deft claws smoothed at the brim, while Nick swung open his door.

“Wilde,” Judy called.

The fox turned to look back.

“Hat,” Judy pointed to her own, nose twitching.

“Yes. Looks good on you, Carrots,” he smirked. “Much better than that old meter-maid bonnet you used to wear.”

“No, _your_  hat. _Regulations_ , Slick,” said Judy, eyes set, patiently watching as Nick opened the glovebox, checked the side door compartment, craned his neck to look behind him, and finally swiped a paw under his passenger seat.

With and a little “Ah-ha,” he fished out his own hat and, dusting away the shed fur it had collected, dropped it onto his head.

“Hm,” he mumbled, trying to get it to sit properly.

It hung at an angle, shifting as his ears settled against the weight. He pushed the Prowler door closed behind him with a dull thump. Nick’s hat bobbed, level with the bottom of the door window.

She watched as the hat slunk away.

A shoulder check, and her door was open now. She jumped down from the boosted seat and with a *thump* of the door and a *plip* of her key fob, Judy locked the Prowler.

She walked ahead carefully but calmly towards the archway above the entrance to Redwood Heights. A trio of young mammals — a dingo, a cougar, and an ibex — were stood up against the wall with a small radio between them. The bass-heavy music made the tiny speaker buzz and ring, setting Judy’s teeth on edge.

The pack shifted uneasily as they regarded the two Officers approaching them. Nick’s claws were scuffling on the pavement behind her.

“Hey, Officer,” called one of the pack, the cougar. Judy’s ears rose to push her hat to one side slightly. She brought her paws up to steady it.

“Officer, you looking to speak to someone about the noise?” asked the cougar, peering from under her jacket hood.

Even for a teenager, she stood way above Judy’s height, and Nick’s too. The cougar’s dark ears quivered a little beneath the canvas hood that loosely covered them.

“We received a complaint, yes,” Judy nodded curtly. “Do you know anything about it?”

She was met with silence. The rabbit started at the pack’s little radio sat on the brick ledge behind them.

Judy’s nose twitched, her brow creasing with a frown.

“I’m sorry, could you just,” Judy looked up at the ibex, pointed at the radio near him and made a little twisting motion with her paw. With a sigh, the ibex complied. Judy nodded.

“So do you? Know anything about it?” Judy leaned in a little.

“Nuh-uh, Officer,” the cougar shook her head, making a little noise that curled a lip and perhaps unintentionally, showed a glimpse of tooth.

“We can sure hear it, though,” she added, wincing a little as she indicated behind her with a roll of her head, back towards the archway. The dingo looked up from his phone and both he and ibex nodded in agreement.

Nick rolled his lips around his teeth, leaning cautiously to peer through the archway beyond, pulling his aviators down a little to peer over them again. He raised a curious eyebrow.

“Okay. Well, we need to check it out,” Judy announced. She looked back to the cougar, who was impatiently regarding the paving at her feet.

“Thank you for your time,” Judy added, nodding stiffly.

Within the two steps she had taken to the archway, the radio had been turned back up, buzzing and keening. Judy looked to Nick, who shrugged impassively.

Once under the archway, Judy surveyed the quadrangle at the heart of Redwood Heights. Multi-scale apartments surrounded it, and for the most part, curtains, blinds, towels, whatever was at hand, were drawn across their windows. She followed the graceful curves of the walls around and up, up to the top of the blocks that made up the Heights. Built up terraces undulated like a canyon, worn smooth. Here and there, wind-blown seeds had settled and grown to crown the little terraces with hanging trails of vegetation.

“Oh, they have gardens here,” Judy sighed to herself, spotting the individual plots outside every ground floor door she could see. She was a little jealous. Her city apartment had little more than a small window box that she had to keep propped on the inside sill.

Her nose wrinkled when she saw that they were mostly overgrown, or scrubby, nearly all filled with cast-aside cartons, or were now a seemingly permanent home to an oversize sofa, piled high with the clutter that wouldn’t fit indoors anymore and cost too much to pay for collection.

It was quiet. The traffic swished and droned gently, the occasional horn blow punctuating the sound drifting from the flyover in the distance.

Other than the mammals at the archway, Judy had yet to see a single resident. Diurnal and nocturnal rhythms aside, it wasn’t exactly early or late, either way. It was unusual to see _anywhere_  in Zootropolis look so deserted, whatever the time of day.

Judy became aware that Nick had fallen back. She turned to look for him. He was stood a few metres back from her, clutching at his ears, his face twisting.

“Nick?” she asked.

“ _Agh_ ,” he moaned. “Can’t you hear it, Hopps? Dispatch wasn’t kidding when they said it was a _noise complaint_. Over there!”

He was speaking loudly, as if he was trying to hold a conversation in a noisy room and hesitantly pointed a trembling claw over to one of the nearby gardens. He quickly snapped his paw back to clamp over his quivering flattened ear.

“I can’t hear anything,” Judy said, for a moment thinking Nick was just fooling around. The look in his eyes told her he was not.

“With those ears, Carrots?” _Gnn_.” He started to back up a little, wincing away from whatever was bothering him.

Judy looked back to follow earlier Nick’s direction, and bounded to make up the short distance to the corner he’d pointed towards.

She’d become aware of it now, a tiny, _tiny_ noise, one barely registering, despite her normally acute hearing. Was this what Nick could hear? It was like nothing at all to her ears, rising and falling like breath at night.

She cast her eyes around. There were more gardens here, more unkempt scrubby little rectangles that reminded Judy of the fallow fields of Bunnyburrow.

Except one.

Someone looked after that garden, Judy thought. Or at least had done until recently. The grasses had begun to grow taller, but the flowerbeds were still sound, and weren’t choked with weeds. The telltale signs of long periods of care and attention were still visible, and, Judy noticed, it wasn’t filled with BugBurga cartons or papers like the others were.

Judy thought the tiny sound would grow louder as she drew nearer, but it remained that same quality, rising and falling with an eerie delicacy.

And there, in the scrubby little bushes that separated that garden from the paving Judy was stood on was a small dark, nondescript box, a tiny cherry-red light glowing atop and a faint suggestion of a mesh on one side, angled towards the quadrangle.

As she crouched, her ears suddenly became erect. Judy took her hat off this time as her thoughts were overtaken by training.

_There’s a suspicious item in a garden in Happytown._

Angling her head to one side, she resisted the urge reach and pick it up, to turn it over on her paws. A sound that had no direction or volume felt so _alien_  to Judy, but she wanted to understand it.

_Small. No wires, no tape. Nothing to suggest improvisation, and doesn’t look like any ordnance I’m familiar with, but…_

She could feel her ears rotating instinctively, trying to locate the source of the delicate rising and falling that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere.

As she studied the device, she could hear Nick groaning in the distance as he shuffled, keeping his distance.

 _It’s suspicious. And it’s doing_  that.  _You need to manage those risks. Remember?_

Without taking her eyes away from the little box, she put her paw to her shoulder. There was a warble.

“Dispatch. This is Officer Hopps.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three updates in three days!
> 
> I'm likely to be a rather busy for the coming week, so I decided to press on and get this chapter, originally scheduled for Friday coming, wrapped up before I get too busy. 
> 
> The next chapter is mostly there, and should appear around the weekend when, if I've had the time and not changed the outline yet again, Nick and Judy will cross paths with Ardmond.


	9. Twenty Six Redwood Heights, Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“What do you think it is?” Judy asked._
> 
> _“Noisy, is what it is,” came the fox’s low response through gritted teeth._

**Special Disposals**

 

Officer Lau, a Special Disposals Technician, crouched on his forepaws to study the little dark box. He advanced cautiously, snout quivering. 

The heavy-set pangolin tilted his head slowly left, then right, then left again as he examined the device closely with his small dark eyes. His ears, partially hidden by his scales were covered by a set of bright yellow defenders he’d unfurled and pulled on almost as soon as he walked under the archway leading to Redwood Heights.

Judy held a soft cordon there, keeping mammals back from the scene, although the apparent noise some could hear was doing most of that work for her. Other mammals, like Judy, didn’t seem to hear it at all, or did so only in varying degrees. Of the few mammals who had lingered, Nick was the most uncomfortable.

Judy had shooed away the curious, and sought to reassure residents who’d emerged while Lau went to work. 

“Please,  _sir_. We need you to remain  _indoors_ ,” she called firmly, bounding over to the opening doorway nearby. She held her paws up to block the rabbit that had emerged. He was shifting from foot to foot, craning over Judy to tray and get a view of what the hunched pangolin in the distance was busying himself with. Judy carefully positioned herself in the rabbit’s path.

“I’ve got an  _appointment_ ,” he said, glancing at his watch as he edged forward, half listening to Judy.

“Please, we need you to remain indoors for the time being, and for you stay  _calm_.” With a little work, Judy managed to guide the rabbit back over his threshold.

“We’ll let you know as soon as its safe,” she smiled brightly, pulling the door closed by the night-latch before padding quickly away with a sigh and shake of her head back to the cordon, to focus her attention back to Officer Lau, some distance away.

When Judy had shown Lau the images of the device she’d captured on her phone, he’d peered closely at the little screen for some time. Then, nodding calmly, and without a word, he began walking stiffly to the area where Judy had found the object.

“What do  _you_  think it is?” she’d asked Nick as the pangolin lumbered away.

“ _Noisy_ , is what it is,” came the fox’s low response through gritted teeth.

The pangolin raised his head and turned slowly to look back at the Officers. Judy saw him holding out his flat paw towards them, claws steady and straight for a moment. Then, curling them tight, he gave a claws-up signal. 

Judy relaxed back a little, although her ears still quivered nervously.

Lau turned his attention forward once more and carefully, he reached out to flick a little sliding nub on the mysterious box to one side. With that done, he made it safe, unclipping a door set flush into the case and catching a pair of power cells as they tumbled out.

Nick, who had been holding the cordon alongside Judy and as close as he could bear to be to the noise, suddenly relaxed with a shudder.

“Ohh-ho ho, thank  _you_!” he moaned loudly in very obvious relief, rolling his head, paw up to keep his hat in place, his hackles settling flat.

Lau pulled his ear defenders down to rest around his wide neck. He shuffled slowly over to the two Officers, the device between his claws. “Your evidence,” he nodded, offering the object to Judy.

“It’s safe,” he added as she hesitated to take it from him. He motioned it towards her once more.

“Oh, one second,” Judy’s ears perked as her paw went to her uniform to retrieve an evidence bag. She shook it out and offered the open neck to Hawley. He shrugged, scales bristling, as he dropped the box and power cells inside.

It barely had any weight.

“So, what is it?” she asked, rolling it over in her paws, looking for any kind of marking, any clue to its purpose.

There were no serial numbers, no manufacturer marks. Just an anonymous little box. She squinted up at the Disposals Officer.

“A repeller,” said the pangolin.

“Uses sound,” he continued. “To keep mammals away from hazardous sites, multi-scale construction, for security too, sometimes.”

“I couldn’t hear it,” Judy mused. 

“No. It all depends on hearing range. It’s adjustable. That way, it doesn’t affect mammals working, while it keeps others away,” Lau explained. “All automatic - there’s a sensor, so if you get too close,” The pangolin made to slowly cover his ears with his claws.

Nick had strolled over back over, his hat in paw as he absent-mindedly wiggled a claw of his own in his ear.

“You need don’t need specific licences to operate them but, outdoors like this?” Lau cast his dark eyes around him. “Because it’s sound, you  _do_  need to display warnings.”

“Hm.” Judy looked up from the evidence bag she was still tumbling over like a puzzle box.

“Officer Lau,” she finally said, brightly. “Thank you for your assistance.”

Lau nodded, and shuffled off to his boxy ZPD vehicle. Judy and Nick walked alongside him to their Prowler, trying to avoid the broad tail of the pangolin as he strode heavily away.

 

* * *

 

“Dispatch, this is Officer Hopps. I’m looking for a name-check on an address. Twenty six, Redwood Heights, Mid-Savannah please.” 

Judy’s paw was at her shoulder whilst she addressed her radio. She dug around in the Prowler door compartment for her charge book with the other. Once she’d retrieved the book, she looked around for a moment, before tucking it awkwardly into her protective claw-vest. Picking up the evidence bag containing the repeller off the seat, she jumped back to the asphalt. With a nudge of her back, the Prowler door closed with a soft thump.

“Hopps, Dispatch. The address is currently registered to a Mr. Ardmond C. Holt.”

“Thank you, Dispatch.” She brought her hat back up and over her head with a tug of a paw.

“Well, I don’t think anyone is likely to press charges any time soon, Fluff,” Nick announced as Judy padded up to his position at the entrance to Redwood Heights.

He’d canvassed a few residents to come forward, but they’d quickly dismissed the whole thing. Even the little pack of mammals were returning to their favoured territory at the perimeter of the quadrangle, the dingo slouching against the overgrown wall there, staring intently at his phone while the cougar and ibex laughed at some unheard joke.

The fox stood, arms folded across his chest as he watched the tumbledown terraces of apartments intently. The haphazard window coverings began to twitch open. The rabbit Judy had kept at bay was rushing away for his appointment, clutching a case of paperwork and making telephoned apologies for his lateness as he went. 

“No, I suppose not,” Judy breathed. “But, we need to speak to a Mr. Ardmond Holt, before we leave. If this is his, it’s a safety violation to operate it without displayed warnings.” Judy scowled, holding up the tightly wrapped evidence bag while she removed her charge book from it’s uncomfortable position. “This is a residential area, not a construction zone.”

 

* * *

 

The lintel of the front door to apartment number twenty six came level to Nick’s shoulders. He hung back, rocking on his heels, remaining on the cracked paving that bounded the property line.

Judy smartly rapped against the door and waited. Nick surveyed the overgrown curving walls of the buildings around him as the door to number twenty six cracked open as far as it’s little security chain would allow. An elderly beaver peered through the gap.

“Mr. Holt? Ardmond Holt?” asked Judy.

“Yes?” The beaver’s voice quavered a little as he squinted at the uniformed rabbit.

“Officer Hopps,” Judy tapped the badge on her vest. “Officer Wilde,” she waved a paw back to the fox at the fox. He removed his aviators and held up a paw to the badge of his own.

“We’re from the ZPD,” Judy added finally. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if we may? You probably noticed we were working around your apartment today,” Judy smiled as she leaned in a little. “May we come in?”

“The fox too?” Ardmond asked with narrowing eyes. “My apartment is a little small.”

Judy’s nose twitched monetarily. Judy opened her mouth to reply, but paused for moment, brow wrinkling a little.

“ _Officer Wilde_?” she emphasised for Ardmona’s benefit, before turning over her shoulder to Nick. “Would you wait here please?”

“Sure,” he grinned. “You go right ahead, Officer Hopps.”

Nick took a step back, waving a paw forward with a little flourish of claes and swinging a leg to turn away. He held his aviators by a single arm, pinched between his claws. Regarding the pack of mammals near the wall with interest, he slid the aviators on, adjusted them slightly and smiled reassuringly as he began to slink in their direction.

Ardmond released the door chain with a click. “Could you wipe your feet, please?” he said, eyes flicking down to Judy’s footpaws.

Judy walked through the hallway and ahead into the main living space, removing her hat as she went. Her ears unfurled and sprang up, glad the weight of the hat was gone.

She cast her eyes around the sparse yet cramped room. It reminded her a little of some of the more elderly family members rooms back home at the Hopps Warren. The same scents of mothballs and of mint, mingling of with the other scents of a room that was lived in perhaps night  _and_  day.

Furniture decorated with patterns that spoke of thrift and bygone fashions were covered with folded rugs in various earthy shades of plaid. 

Here and there were photographs, prompts for a failing memory, of Ardmond and another beaver - his wife or perhaps his sister? Judy couldn’t tell. 

Ardmond shuffled in behind his walking frame, moving towards the sofa. 

“May I sit, please?” he asked. Judy nodded.

He stiffly took a seat in one of the two depressions in the slightly sagging seat. He looked up at Judy with wet, rheumy eyes.

“What did you need to talk to me about, Officer?” Ardmond asked.

Judy placed the evidence bag containing the little repeller down on the low table in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The repeller device is based in part on ultrasonic pest repellers, but also on a device called the 'Mosquito', which was apparently used in the past to keep crowds from forming in areas by broadcasting a high frequency sound, and deployed where loitering was considered an issue.
> 
> Special Disposals Technician Lau is a pangolin, and the protective scales covering his body would help keep him a good degree safer in his particular line of work.
> 
> I've decided to take this story, along with others out of this work and into their own, details of which are in the next chapter. I hope you'll follow along with the story there if you've enjoyed this tale of _Redwood Heights_ , and _All The Colours_ so far.


	10. Authors Note

Readers of the comments thread for this work will know I’ve been considering opening up  _All The Colours_  into a series rather than keeping these stories in a single work. I’ve decided to go ahead and move in that direction.

This is mainly because  _Twenty Six, Redwood Heights_  has become somewhat more than I’d ever anticipated when I wrote the first chapter as a one-shot a few weeks back, but also because I’ve formed a much clearer idea about where I’d like to take the continuity of  _All The Colours_ , some of the themes I’d like to explore, and of some milestones I have in mind along the way. 

Making the arcs separate works will, I think, also help me write more informative summaries and organise with more specific tags. I can be more flexible with different ratings when needed, and make the individual stories themselves more accessible to new readers.

I’ll be marking this particular work as complete, but won’t be deleting it. It’s a useful signpost to the series for both existing subscribers and for future readers. I’d also like to preserve the comments I’ve received so far, all of which have been encouraging and helpful for this  _very_  out-of-practice writer.

Over the next few days, I’ll be moving the one-shots and arcs from here out into individual works, and will take this opportunity to firm up some of those earlier chapters too. I’ll also be finishing  _Twenty Six, Redwood Heights_  as an individual work, which I think is close to concluding in a few chapters time.

Thank you for reading my works so far, and I hope you enjoy what they have in store in the future.

-paintkettle.


End file.
